Chinese and Spanish may not even have an alphabet in common, but these two cultures will be coming together for the Upper West Side’s first annual Bilingual Fest, a charity event featuring music and dance acts in both Chinese and Spanish. The family-friendly festival, which will take place on April 20th at the West 83rd Ministry Center, was put together by Toni Wang of the children’s bilingual music organization, “A Little Mandarin,” and Bilingual Buds School- one of the few elementary schools in the city that teaches both Mandarin and Spanish.

Bilingual Fest is part of NYC Heritage Week, and has been endorsed by City Council Member Gale Brewer. The afternoon’s events will be emceed by broadcast journalist Pei-Sze Cheng. Kids can enjoy performances across the cultural spectrum, from a Chinese Lion Dance and songs played on traditional Chinese instruments, to salsa dancing and Spanish-language sing-alongs.

But the real highlight of the evening is when the Latino and  Chinese cultures will collide, for the musical collaboration between Toni Wang, and Bernardo Palombo of “El Taller,” a Spanish cultural community organization, who has written songs for Sesame Street’s Spanish language program.

“They may be different languages, but it is all still music for children and families. We don’t aim to put those two together, you can have a song go from English to Spanish to Chinese and its all enjoyable,” said Wang.

The collaboration will feature a Puerto Rican song with some verses translated into Chinese entitled “Le Lo Lai” (the Puerto Rican version of singing la-la-la) Palombo and Wang will trade off verses, and will be performing with children. Another subtle colliding of the cultures according to Wang is the performance by a Chinese dancer who will be dancing with a Hispanic partner.

Bernardo Palombo performing at a Spanish cultural center.

The Bilingual Fest started as Wang’s idea to do a concert with the Bilingual Buds School. As the school also teaches Spanish, Wang began looking for Hispanic acts to join the cultural effort, and found Palombo. They then decided to turn the concert into a charity event. Proceeds will benefit The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, an organization that mainly works with families in the Bronx, and APEX, an Asian-American youth outreach group based in Chinatown.

While collaborating together, both Palombo and Wang noticed that the two cultures have more in common than the originally thought – a love of family and family time for instance, as well as cooking with a lot of rice. Palombo thinks that the experience will be educational for all ages.
“Two completely different languages on the same stage is very positive for the child,” said Palombo. “To not only be exposed to the differences but also the understanding and respecting that which isn’t your own culture is very important.”

The event will take place at 3 p.m. on Saturday on West 83rd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. The cost is $10 for a child and $15 for an adult. It is expected to sell out, so Palombo suggested getting tickets ahead of time.

“I hope this will be an annual event because the timing is right,” said Wang. “People want their children to become more globally aware.”

In most of the United States, if all you knew about Spain came from the Spanish restaurants in your town, you’d be laboring under the impression that everyone in Spain listens exclusively to folk music, uses too much paprika and hasn’t yet reached the Iron Age, preferring to cook exclusively in terra cotta crocks. These are places to which you go out for tapas, apparently the staple food of Spaniards. Unlike many such national minstrel shows (the red-sauce Italian, moo-shu Chinese or plate-breaking Greek), these notions are based in a reality that continues to exist; however, they should never have come to represent a nation of millions.

In New York City, there is one kind of restaurant that is sorely lacking; one that is the bedrock of Spanish food culture. It’s a small, casual bar that just happens to serve better food than it needs to, a place where eating is not the point of your evening, it’s just an ever-present element thereof. You go out to meet friends, to talk, to hang out; you have some cheese, a plate of anchovies, a little bread to keep you going. Arguing about who makes the best pan con tomate and whether to get the squid or the chorizo may be most of the conversation, but you’ll never sit in front of a massive plate, taking photos and eating in silence until the next course comes. It’s aspirational living at its best, being incredibly exacting about food while treating it with the nonchalance it deserves.

This is what you get at Bar Jamón (125 E. 17th St., casamononyc.com), the round-the-corner companion to Mario Batali’s longstanding Casa Mono. The narrow, dark-wood-lined space is unforgivingly small, the room dominated by a winding, high-topped table and a narrow marble bar at the entry that also serves as wine display and prep space. Enormous mirrors cover the walls at both ends of the room, one marked in white with the menu, the other reflecting diners’ flushed, laughing faces back to them in the shimmer of candlelight.

It is a perfectly romantic location to put your date through a surreptitious battery of tests: Are they adventurous, or will they blanch when told that the “pulpo” in pulpo with spicy garbanzos is octopus (though you might let them—more for the rest of us!)? Can they appreciate a dish almost ludicrous in its simplicity like that pan con tomate, two slices of toasted bread smeared with olive oil and tomato pulp and a judicious scattering of chunky salt? It’s the best in the city precisely because of that simplicity, relying on the quality of the sharply green oil and obscenely red tomatoes rather than chef-y theatrics to dazzle.

Should your date fail the tests, there’s plenty to drown your sorrows in a wine list that is second to none for highlighting the varietals that are routinely overshadowed by dark red malbecs and tempranillos on most round-the-world wine lists. For a lighter way to spend your night, one of the Basque txakolis is the only way to go. What is otherwise an exceptionally well-balanced, mid-weight white is made sublime by its presentation: poured in a thin stream into a small carafe from as high as your waiter’s wingspan can manage, the aeration lending a slight effervescence that lurks without overpowering the palate. Like sparkling wines it pairs perfectly with rich, fatty foods like cheeses and the eponymous jamón, but as a heavier white it works just as well with brighter, more acidic foods like olives and stuffed piquillo peppers.

Whatever you do, don’t order all at once. Get one plate at a time, linger over your (generously sized) glass of wine, people-watch, have a real conversation with your companion. In other words, get Spanish.

Volunteer Maria Fabian weighs food to be given out at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger at the Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew on West 86th Street.

West Side Campaign Against Hunger passes goal in Thousand Turkey Challenge

West Side Campaign Against Hunger stocked a special item in their pantry this past week: a whole lot of turkeys. The nonprofit, located in the basement of the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew at 262 W. 86th St., co-sponsored the second annual Thousand Turkey Challenge, a turkey drive organized by local religious groups to provide holiday meals for at-need families.

“You’re seeing us at our most chaotic. We’re not usually this messy,” promised Stewart Desmond, incoming WSCAH executive director, as he gave a quick tour of the bustling basement pantry on Monday during the busiest meal time. Patrons pushed small carts and chatted mostly in Spanish while volunteers checked out finished shoppers and ushered in others seated in the large basement waiting area. Unlike a soup kitchen, Desmond explained, patrons at WSCAH’s pantry choose their meals from well-stocked shelves based on a point system that allows for a certain amount of grains, protein, vegetables and so forth. Then they cook the food at their own apartments.

“We live in a progressive community that wants to help people in the most progressive way possible,” Desmond said. “A pantry like this that gives people some dignity represents the values of the Upper West Side. We’re something the Upper West Side can be proud of.”

At the basement’s far end, a table with members of the Society of the Advancement of Judaism and West End Synagogue, the drive’s two founders, collected turkeys for the pantry from Upper West Side donors. Last year, the members said, the organizations collected several hundred turkeys and raised over $10,000 from cash donations, which allowed them to provide holiday meals for over 1,700 families. This year, Desmond estimated that they would raise over 1,000 turkeys from Nov. 15 to 21, the drive’s dates. He noted that they also provide hams and cooked chickens to smaller families.

Chris Gill, a volunteer at a check-out counter who has been involved with WSCAH for about 10 years, said that the pantry was providing an essential service to the city’s community in hard economic times. “Famine is serious,” he asserted. “If it wasn’t for pantries, they’d have to open more jails. There’d be a lot more crime. The rate of unemployment, the lack of food stamps—that would cause havoc. There would be a lot more policemen standing in front of doors.”

Many shoppers agreed that the pantry was providing a good service. Bronx resident and pantry regular Roger Beddoe complained that the 1.5-hour line this time of year was “crazy, ridiculous,” but perked up at the prospect of turkey. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s worth the wait.”

We doubt that anyone thinks of New York City as a summer camp mecca—but by most standards, it really is. Consider all the children’s activity centers and enrichment programs that the city is blessed with—some go on hiatus and some slow down in the summertime, offering the same programming but less of it, but many others take what they do best and build wonderful day camps around their core offerings.

Academic

Keep your kiddo’s mind fresh this August with the academic day camp offered by Drake Bennett Summer Schools. Divided into two sessions and housed at The Epiphany School, 1st-6th graders can brush up with lessons in literacy, math and science, while chess and drama pepper the afternoon hours. Or join Mathnasium for their Summer Re-Boot Camp. Specifically for 2nd-8th graders, this half-day camp is filled with math-centric games and activities.

Language

Set your kid on the fast track to becoming bilingual. Collina Italiana is offering Italian Summer in the City Camp, which includes Italian-infused music, theater, movies, cartoons and museum outings. Children as young as 3 can start learning “bonjour” and “merci” at the French Institute Alliance Française, where culture and language will be taught through stories and workshops.

The Language Workshop for Children is a great tool to get your child speaking like a native. Offering summer camps in Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese, immersion activities include costume days, arts and crafts, baking and birthday celebrations.

Media

Future video game creators will love the options in Summer Media Camp through the Museum of the Moving Image, where campers get to flex their software muscles learning animation, live action video and more. Or send your wannabe MTV VJ to New York Film Academy’s one-week Music Video Camp, designed for kids with little or no knowledge (but a passion) for the industry. And let’s not forget about summer camp at Take Two Film Academy, which will show your budding director the ins and outs of production, acting and editing. Each student gets to keep an online and DVD copy of their final product to show off to friends and family!

Nature

Wonder about wildlife? Kids ages 8-12 can get friendly with hyenas and lions at the Bronx Zoo’s Animal Kingdom Camp, where they will observe creatures up close and learn how to best protect an animal’s habitat. Taking full advantage of Prospect Park, the Park Explorers’ Camp Explorers program is ideal for the elementary school set. Be prepared to get a little dirty as this camp takes a hands-on approach to Mother Nature—think sprinklers, hill rolling and a host of field trips. And regardless of where you live, an awesome camp adventure awaits with NYC Parks Experience Summer Camp. With locations in every borough, this über-affordable camp provides structured hiking, swimming and sports.

Science

Inquisitive young minds will love the American Museum of Natural History’s Fossils and DNA Camp, where they can explore the evolutionary timeline. If your elementary school-aged child is more into constructing and electronic, the range of camp choices at Launch Math will give him or her the chance to build rockets and robots or design video games.

Budding scientists can use the city as their laboratory with the SciTech Kids Summer Camp. In Central Park, campers build solar ovens, learn about gravity thanks to the thrills of Victorian Gardens and make a few insect friends.

Visit newyorkfamily.com for even more day camp options.

Douglas Keister started out as a photographer, but it wasn’t until nearly a decade ago that he married his profession with two of his passions: writing and cemeteries. To Keister, who has documented both foreign and domestic resting places from Scotland and Italy to Oakland and Dixieland, cemeteries are “pure environments, [they’re] extremely evocative.”

This year, Keister published his latest deceased-themed work, Stories in Stone New York: A Field Guide to New York City Cemeteries and their Residents. We picked Keister’s brain to come up with his picks for the best burial grounds below 14th Street.

Keister’s Digs for the Departed

Trinity Church

Located in Lower Manhattan, this leafy plot dates back to the late 1600s and its famous residents, of course, are a collection of distinguished Caucasian men. The notables laid to rest here include Alexander Hamilton; though never a president, Hamilton served as aide to President George Washington, was the first U.S. secretary of the treasury and founded the Bank of New York. Among the other points of interest at this cemetery is the headstone of 5-year-old Robert Churcher (1676-1681), said to be the oldest in the churchyard.

St. Paul’s Chapel

The St. Paul’s Chapel crowd might be less illustrious than Trinity’s, but the space is no less green and meditative. Publisher John Holt (1721-1784) and actor George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812) found a final home here.

St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery

Despite a lack of headstones, this site is home to an underground burial vault that houses one of New York’s more famous founders: Petrus, or Peter, Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant served as the last director general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, present-day New York. He converted the property into a family chapel in 1660. The crowd at the St. Mark’s crypt is a collection of political bigwigs, including Vice President Daniel Tompkins (1774-1825).

New York City Marble Cemetery

Not to be confused with the nearby New York Marble Cemetery (located at 41½ Second Ave.), this plot was started in 1831 and is comprised of a series of roughly 258 vaults. While the cemetery contains many impressive monuments to mark its crypts, the most famous person interred there was President James Monroe. Though his remains were eventually reburied in Virginia, a monument bearing his name still stands at the site.

Congregation Shearith Israel Cemeteries

While the location of the first Shearith Israel cemetery remains unknown, it is known that the congregation, mostly Jews of Spanish and Portuguese descent, was given a small piece of land in New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s for their dead. Their second burial site, used from 1805 to 1829, is still standing in Greenwich Village, though significantly smaller than its original acreage. Though the residents aren’t notable per se, the uniqueness of this plot makes it a destination.

The Trinity Churchyard in Lower Manhattan boasts one of Downtown’s more famous departed residents, Alexander Hamilton.
PHOTO BY DOUGLAS KEISTER